Listen Now

Adam researches disorders of visual imagery, such as that exhibited by one of your hosts. We talked to him about understanding ourselves better, a form of epilepsy that makes you forget, and what his research field actually is (it’s not cognitive and neural biology…)

Kate researches primary care, and she was kind enough to talk to us about what primary care is and how it’s changing, how much more NHS24 does now than when it started and how migrants accessing the NHS is making it work better for everyone

Will researches repair & regeneration, and he chatted to us about wound signalling, cells that level up, genetic powerhouses and a death star for flies

Rachael works on understanding what people say without speaking, and she talked to us about cultural expressions, the “other race effect”, and how her computer can’t pull funny faces

Lisa is a social scientist at Glasgow, and she talked to us about how your community affects your health, poverty safari, and the difference that science can make to real people

In a special Not Exactly Brain Surgery episode, biologists Philip and Clara talked to Lynn, a lecturer in physics at Heriot Watt. They talked about optical tweezers, being knocked over by sunlight and the tweezability of yeast

Poppy works in neglected tropical diseases, and she spoke to us about discrete choice experiments, worms that come out of snails, and how children can poo on demand

Karen is working with nanoparticles to see cells in a new way, and she spoke to us about having to learn how to talk to medics, accidental discoveries, and emailing strangers

Gail is actually a physicist, and she talked to us about a lens as big as your arm, sending hard drives through the post, and the difficulty of advertising DVD on VHS

Elaine is trying to make stem cells, and she was kind enough to talk to us about the importance of finding a question that drives you, tiny little mouse hearts, and Vegas slots

David is looking at the links between multimorbidity and social care, and he spoke to us about wrangling massive datasets, calling 999 from 111 and drumming in the infantry

This one is just the two of us, talking to each other about what we used to do and how we got here. Listen out for Indian flag cosplay, prosthetic hands and some seagulls in the background

Adriano is researching the mechanisms of inflammation, and he was kind enough to talk to us about white blood cells, zebrafish and how we’re just here to serve our gut bacteria overlords

Philippa works on sex steroids, and she was kind enough to talk to us about Arnold Schwarznegger, her rather unusual PhD viva, and the extraordinary growth of pig blastocysts

Henry is isolating compounds from parasites in the hope that they might be useful in the treatment of allergies and immune disorders, and he was kind enough to talk to us about whale guts, medical uses for Tabasco sauce, and the way that mummies are all full of worms

Chris works with cancer and inflammation, and we talked to him about apoptosis, Prometheus and treacherous big-eaters

Margarete works on a protein she discovered called invadolysin, and she kindly talked to us about genetics, flyverine, mitosis and getting flies in the post